I made a bad decision last week. I walked the dog.

Normally, I’m not the dog-walker, but the Ladies were out shopping. There was whining, followed by barking, followed by nudging and pawing. Those big sad basset hound eyes. Ugh. What can I say? I caved.

I could have just taken her out to do her business, but it was a pleasant afternoon, so I took her on a stroll down to the big pond. We lounged on the floating dock for a while, then walked the path along the ridge.

I need to add here that the grass was very long, thanks to the many weeks of unseasonably wet weather we’ve had, which has made mowing all but impossible.

As she snuffled happily along the muddy trail, I noticed an amazing number of deer tracks. It’s been a great year for deer, too.

When we got home, I dried the dog, then starting combing her. She hates that comb, but we’ve learned a thing or two about basset hounds and ticks over the years.

It’s not unusual to oust a couple of ticks from her fur in late October. And sure enough, two dog ticks jumped ship right away. But as I kept combing, they kept coming. Another two dog ticks. Then a much smaller tick, a little black one – a deer tick! Then two more dog ticks. Followed by four more deer ticks.

So disgusting.

I kept count as I crushed them, one by one, between my thumbnail and the concrete floor. Final tally: eight dog ticks; seven deer ticks, making a grand total of fifteen ticks.

Surely that’s some kind of record.

I checked myself with the obsessive rigor that follows close on the heels of formication, the feeling that your skin is alive with creepy-crawlies, but I was in the clear. No ticks on me, thank you very much.

I was especially wary of them because our next-door neighbor had a nasty bout of Lyme disease this summer. If the numbers from the CDC are any indication, Lyme disease in Pennsylvania is on the rise. According to the CDC’s week-by-week statistics, by this time last year, there were 3,358 cases of Lyme disease reported in the state. This year, there have already been 5,889 cases reported. That’s more than a 70% increase in a single year.

Lyme disease is caused by the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi. B. burgdorferi is a spirochete bacterium, one of those corkscrew-looking critters that swims along, looking as harmless as rotini pasta, until it gets inside a human body and starts infecting everything.

Dog ticks are not great vectors of B. burgdorferi. That honor goes to the much smaller, much harder to detect deer tick.

But how does a deer tick come to be a tiny walking hypodermic of such a dread disease?

The answer lies in the revolting, but fascinating life cycle of the tick.

Okay, it’s late summer. An adult female deer tick latches onto a host – perhaps a white-tail deer, middle-aged writer, or basset hound — and enjoys a leisurely four or five day blood meal. Swooning with postprandial delight, she finds a male, has a quick fling, drops to the ground and overwinters in some cozy leaf litter. Copious amount of antifreeze in her gut – you read that right; ticks are able to secrete glycerol, the same compound you used to find in automobile radiators – help her survive the long winter.

Our expectant mom gets busy the following spring laying elegant clusters of a few hundred eggs each. Out pop, say, a thousand ravenous larvae, who go searching for their first blood meal among ground-hopping birds or suitably low-slung mammals like white-footed mice. Successful larvae become hungry nymphs. The nymphs order off the grown-up menu, which includes larger mammals like foxes, but more famously, white-tailed deer. Also humans! By the time they reach adulthood, ticks are truly catholic in their tastes. They’ll eat pretty much anything that bleeds.

Each time a tick larva, nymph, or adult feeds, the bacteria in its gut swim into the bloodstream of its host. Or, conversely, bacteria in the host’s bloodstream swim into the tick. This is what makes the deer tick an ideal vector for spreading bacteria like B. burgdorferi among an entire mammal population, from the lowliest mouse to a dog-walking Homo sapiens.

Once B. burgdorferi weasels its way into the human body, it starts causing all sorts of infectious trouble, starting at the site of the tick bite, where the body’s initial immune response can often be seen in the form of a tell-tale red bulls-eye.

Often, but not always. Take the case of our next-door neighbor – let’s call him “Patient B.” Early this summer, Patient B noticed a pesky bug bite on his arm, but thought it was from a mosquito. Unlike a mosquito bite, though, it didn’t fade in a few days. In fact, the bite got redder, and the redness spread all around the bite. But eventually, after a week or so, the redness began to fade, and he forgot all about it.

A few weeks later, he started having terrible flu symptoms. Fever, chills, body aches. Finally he broke down and made an appointment. The doctor – who’d just fought off a case of Lyme disease himself! – immediately put two and two together. Because so much time had elapsed since the bite, poor Patient B had to suffer an extended course of antibiotics. Months’-worth, in fact. But I’m happy to report that the antibiotics seem to have done the trick.

Moral of the story: an unusually persistent bug bite, whether or not it develops a “bulls-eye,” is something to watch carefully. An unusual bite plus flu symptoms almost surely means trouble.

This column was published in the Perry Co Times on 03 November 2011

For more information, please contact Mr. Olshan at writing@matthewolshan.com